Personal: Optimus
by Lunar Mist
Summary: An anthology of Personal: Optimus stories. Tex tackles college
1. chapter 1

Hey guys. Been a while, hasn't it? Yeah. Sorry for the huge hiatus. I've been dealing with some serious depression on top of moving out to attend university an hour from home. It's been a crazy ride, guys. Definitely more downs than ups. I wrote this tonight because I really needed Optimus, and I remembered writing him into my life before. So I figured I would start this anthology of Personal: Optimus continuation stories. This is still Tex, though she's been promoted via Optimus since her high school days. She's in upper level college courses, so I hope y'all can still relate to her. I'm sorry for any editing things. I wrote this on my ipad and uploaded it on the app, so I'm not sure how the quality will pan out, but I'm vastly curious. I'll hopefully have a lot of time to write in the coming month because I'm going on a study abroad to Australia (whoop whoop!), so I may not update GaGS cuz I gotta revamp parts of that, but ive got some new ideas I wanna work through, so not to get your hopes up but o personally hope I can do this. Thanks, guys.

The door opened almost exactly two hours after she had gone through it. He had followed her as far as he was allowed, but Personals were not permitted in the testing rooms as they opened the floor to cheating. And so the great Optimus Prime was relegated to guarding the door, along with two Ironman Personals, a Ratchet, and a Leonardo Ninja Turtle. The conversation had been fairly interesting, as the Leonardo Personal had a backstory nearly as tragic as Optimus did. They had hit it off during the first class their owners had shared. The conversation died as Lizzy trudged through the testing room door, a grim look on her face.

"Let's go, Optimus," she muttered, her voice a mere whisper of its normal jubilant tone. He jumped to attention and trotted over to his human, carefully examining her down-turned face for hints of how the test had gone. Her expression was as blank as her voice was, and he had his answer.

Primus, not again.

"Lieutenant?" he uttered, not completely sure what to say. This was the second test she had flunked, after all, and he knew his words of encouragement wouldn't likely be accepted as easily. Useless platitudes had never worked on Tex, but he was unsure what else he could offer at this point. She saved him from his dilemma by giving him a minute shake of her head.

"Please don't, Optimus," she pleaded, her voice wavering dangerously. "Not here. Not right now." She bent down and lifted the prime into her arms, and without taking a moment to bid farewell to her friend's sentient turtle, she trudged to the stairs.

The walk to her car was a silent one, and Optimus wondered if she could feel his spark speeding up with every step she took. His deep blue optics never left her face, zeroed in on the carefully controlled pain it portrayed. A single tear dropped from her left eye, but before Optimus could reach up to wipe it away, Tex violently raked her sleeve across her eyes to destroy the evidence of her dejection. Sunglasses were shoved onto her face, despite the overcast sky, and Elizabeth sped up to a brisk walk. No one would see her cry.

She made it to her car in five minutes, and Optimus winced as she viciously stabbed her key into the lock and turned it to the left. She wrenched the door open and tossed her backpack carelessly into the passenger seat before dropping into the drivers seat herself. The door was slammed shut, and the key jammed into the ignition. The air conditioner immediately kicked on with the engine, blowing hot air onto the two occupants, but the cheerful Journey song was silenced with a sharp smack.

And silence. Liz made no move to shift the car into reverse or even to buckle in. Her hazel eyes glared at the sunscreen covering the front window as if it were to blame for al her problems. Optimus almost wished it was. That would at least offer him a foe to vanquish, a physical being that he could take down and in doing so, remove all the trouble and pain from his lieutenant's life. Unfortunately, her adversary was one that Optimus could not help with, one that he could not defeat. So he sat in the silence, perched on his owner's lap as he watched her stare ahead, her mind miles away.

"It's not fair," she whispered finally as she pulled her sunglasses off to toss into the passenger seat. Optimus immediately perked up at her voice, mentally preparing himself to do what he did best: defend Tex from herself. He shifted himself around, crossing his legs as he leaned his back against the steering wheel, ever careful of the horn.

"Talk to me," he commanded gently, a simple phrase that had come to mean so much to his human. It told her that he was here, he was listening, and that he would help. He may not be able to kill her enemies, but he could at least make her monsters go away.

"I studied so hard," she whimpered, her eyes still facing foreword even as they filled with liquid. "I understood the homework. You didn't have to help me barely at all," she added. She blinked rapidly against the tears filling her eyelids, and identical tears slid down her nose. "Why can't I do this? Why can't I pass these tests?" She whispered. Optimus hummed lowly in his chest, mimicking the cat purr that so often calmed her down.

"Your other classmates are having similar difficulty, Tex. This is not a problem with you," he assured her, and he was telling the truth. The other Personals in the hallway had said as much. They had complained about the stress this class caused their respective humans, how strained they had become.

"Isn't it?" she snapped. "How can I get into vet school if I can't even pass a physics test? I got a 22, Optimus! 22 out of 100! I took two hours on that test, and I still didn't finish it!"

"And others will have similar grades," Optimus stated firmly. "You will do better on the next test."

"That's what you said for this one," she hissed with a low groan. A frustrated sigh rushed from her lips as she leaned forward against the wheel, placing her head on her hands at the top of the wheel. Optimus expertly shifted to the side and rose to his pedes on the center console beside the gear stick.

"Elizabeth, this class is not an easy one. Many people have to retake it," he reminded her gently as he placed a hand on her shoulder. The shoulder began to shake under his hand as a sob rose from his ward.

"It's not fair," she repeated, and Optimus internally panicked when more tears began dripping from her eyes onto her lap. He was losing control of the conversation as quickly as she lost control of her tight grip on her emotions. "I made a B in Organic Chemistry, and nobody passes O-Chem on their first run! Why can't I make a C in Physics? Why can't I do this?"

The statement pulled a sigh from the prime. He could remember her joy when she announced her success in Organic Chemistry 1, and likewise, he could remember her defeated tone when she told him that she had failed Organic Chemistry 2 the following semester. "Chemistry is a subject you understand easily. Physics is a select study, even for Cybertronians," he reasoned.

"So what! I failed O-Chem 2 and now I'm gonna fail Physics!" Lizzy cried, her body shuddering as another sob ripped from her chest. "I'm so stupid," she whispered, and just like that, the sobs stopped as her brain hitched on that last word. Stupid. Because her dreams, her future career hinged on her being smart enough to make it into veterinary school. Her body went still as her eyes grew distant again, staring at her lap as if it could give her answers.

"You are not stupid," Optimus muttered with conviction, his voice easily carrying over the silence. She ignored it like he expected her to, a useless platitude that her mind easily dismissed. She remained silent for a few minutes, long enough for the air conditioning to cool the car to a comfortable 70 degrees Fahrenheit. When she spoke again, it was in a desolate whisper.

"Optimus... what if I'm not smart enough to do this?" she questioned. He remained silent as she continued, knowing she needed to get these words, these _fears_ , out. "My family has spent so much money to give me this opportunity. Mom can finally brag on me, and Dad is so excited that I'm passionate about my future. What if I can't do this? What if I can't learn anymore?" She turned to look at him, and his sparked _ached_ at the pain and uncertainty her eyes held. He recognized those emotions from the early days of the war when he wondered if he was truly good enough to bring the war to an end, to lead the Autobot, mere scientists and Academy recruits, into battle.

This would not do. He stepped into her lap, taking her face into his small hands as she straightened and stared into his wise optics, and he firmly gave her the exact same advice Ironhide had imparted on him.

"This is simply a battle in the war. Some battles we win, and some we lose. The position you are in is a difficult one, and because of that, it is logical that you will struggle. You cannot give up the war because you lose one battle, though. You must rally yourself and prepare for the next fight. You must keep fighting for what you want, because you are the only one that can make yourself succeed." Optimus gazed deeply into his human's eyes, gaining strength from the hope he saw forming there. "You are smart enough, Lieutenant. If you do not pass this class, then we will try again and again until you do. Do not think you are alone. I will be there for every defeat, and I will cheer for your every success."

A whispered, "Thanks, Optimus," was his prize along with a crushing hug, and as they drove home, Optimus didn't judge his owner a bit for her side trip to La Fiesta Tacoria. He didn't think less of her as she ate six tacos while watching M*A*S*H reruns. He was proud of her when she ended the night reading her physics book.

Because in the end, she would succeed because she didn't have it in her to quit, and that was what Optimus bragged about the following morning to Leonardo.

Well, that's it. Um, thanks for being patient with me, guys. It's been a pretty long couple of years, but I'm hoping to reclaim my hobbies from the depressive funk. I'm hoping my social media detox will help with my focus and attention span. Who knows? Um... if you are the praying type, please pray for me. I am legitimately failing physics, and I have cried more in the past two months than I have the past year altogether. So, um, you know... if you could pray for me, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks guys!


	2. Chapter 2

Hey, guys. Thank for being so patient with me over the last few years. As you could probably tell, I haven't had any time to write, and on top of that, I've be struggling with some serious mental health issues. I wish I could say that I'm over it and all better, but as anyone with mental health problems can tell you, I'm only in a high section of my life right now. I'm in my last semester of college right now, working to get my Bachelors or Biomedical Science, so I still don't have a lot of free time, but I _am_ trying to get back on this website.

Unfortunately, depression has a nasty way of robbing you of your drive to perform your hobbies, and just like I've told all of you so many times before, writing stories is just like learning/speaking a language: you have to practice and use it or you lose it. All the research of seen has told me that the best way to get back into writing is by reading a crapton of books and writing a crapton of one-shots. So that's my goal. I will probably create a side account to post all my non-Persobots stuff to for now until I feel that my writing is up to par again. Cuz I fully expect alot of the stuff I create to be crap for a little bit.

Not this one, though. I actually really like how this one came out! I'm planning on editing **GaGS** because I kinda hate some of it, and I want to take it in a different direction. I'll update y'all on that through the fic itself. I'm not sure if I'll continue **Three's a Crowd** or **Bring Me Peace.** I hate the plot of the latter, and I can't really relate to the latter as easily because I've been out of high school running 7 years now. Heck, I don't even remember what my life was like that much in high school anymore. I will continue this college thread, though, and I have a chapter story in the works based off the Persobots 'verse. So we'll see how that goes. For now, I'll see y'all 'round!

* * *

PTSD

4076 words

* * *

 _His vocalizer buzzed with static as his systems slowly came back online. His processor whirred as it attempted to work through corrupted memory files, and he groaned at the resulting ache. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a foreboding feeling festered, echoed deeply by his spark and the ancient artifact that rested there._

 _Something horrible had happened. Even as his processor struggled to defragment the memory files, he knew this without a doubt. Something horrible had happened, and it was his fault. He had known this would happen, had warned them!_

… _Warned who…?_

 _Megatron. He attacked. Optimus knew he would attack. He had known it as soon as Megatron's demands had been ignored – mocked, even! The Senate. He had warned them! Optimus had known without a shadow of a doubt that Megatron would retaliate! But this…_

… _What was this…? What had happened…?_

 _He forced his processor to ignore the memory files as he shifted through his onlining protocols. He had to talk to the Senate. He had to_ warn _them. Megatron would retaliate! He would retaliate, and it would be Optimus's fault because he hadn't warned the Senate!_

 _But he_ had _warned them. He had known this would happen, and he had warned them._

… _What had happened…?_

 _His optics glitched only once as he finally onlined them, and he wondered why. He was going to the Senate. Why did his head hurt so much?_

The Senate! _He had to_ warn them!

 _But he had… hadn't he? They told him to leave… But… Megatron would retaliate…_

 _Why was his frame so warm…? His optics glitched again as he slowly raised himself to his hands and knees. His head hurt_ so much _. He should see a physician before he goes to the Senate. He would need a clear mind to convince them. He just… he just needed to stand up… Why was that so hard? Even in his current position, his gyroscope whirled, and his limbs struggled to hold his distributed weight. His tired mind balked at the very thought of rising to two legs._

 _But he had to_ warn _them. Megatron… he would retaliate. He hadn't warned the Senate. They needed to know._

 _With renewed purpose, Optimus slowly pushed himself onto his feet, pausing for a good breem in a crouch as his systems rebelled at the movement. He succeeded, though, barely. His optics refused to focus as he swayed on his pedes, and he gripped the back of his helm where the most pain seemed to radiate from. Huh… that was a sizable dent…_

 _Maybe he should go visit a physician before going to the Senate… He would need a clear mind to convince them… Yes… his… medic…? No… physician… Megatron had a medic… because of his army… Megatron… Megatron! He had to warn the Senate…_

 _Optimus groaned as he took a single unsteady step forward and grunted as he nearly tripped over another person lying on the ground. Well, that was strange… Optimus dropped his hand to his side and looked down, frowning deeply at the puddle of energon surrounding the mech. Primus, how messy… he must be in a bar…_

Grease And Energon _! He was at Grease And Energon, that bar in Iacon that Ironhide always visited. He was there because… because… why was he there…?_

 _A warning flitted across his HUD, informing him of a corrupted memory file. Huh… that was weird. It must have something to do with the reason he had a processor ache. And his processor_ hurt _. He raised his hand to his helm where the pain seemed to emanate from and grimaced. That was a sizable dent… He should probably see his physician… Yeah…_

 _Optimus stepped around the offlined mech, tutting to himself about the lack of dignity such a mech would display be being overcharged in public. The prime wobbled to the door, barely noting how many overcharged mechs there were in the bar as he shuffled around another. He didn't note how eerily quiet the normally raucous bar was, and he didn't perceive how the energon splatters of the wall and puddles on the floor differed from those in the cubes._

 _Instead, he pressed forward in the goal currently present in his processor. He needed to see a physician. Primus, his helm hurt. That couldn't be a good sign. He needed to be able to think clearly… why…? Something was important…_

 _Megatron. He needed to warn them! Who…? Someone important. He needed to tell them about his helm. He had a dent. He needed to warn Megatron about his dent._

 _No… That didn't wake sense… The Senate. He needed to warn the Senate… about his dent…? No… He needed to warn them…_

 _He forced the confusion to the back of his processor and pressed forward. He would figure it all out once he got there. The Senate was composed of wise, trustworthy mechs. They would know what he needed to warn them of._

 _With that reassuring thought in mind, Optimus stumbled into the motion range of the door, fully expecting it to slide open. He hadn't quite planned a course of action for if the door in question remained closed. He gave a weak grunt as his body's forward momentum ran him into the door. He moaned in pain as he leaned against the unmoving metal, thankful that he had had the clarity of mind to bring his hands up to slow his collision. Still, his processor raged in agony as the light bump it had received during the impact. His knees gave out underneath him, and he groaned as he slide down against the door sideways, his shoulder armor making a horrible shrieking noise as it ran down the metal it was pressed against. A long streak of red was left behind on the door, but Optimus hardly cared. His thoughts centered on the pounding in his helm._

 _His helm hurt_ so bad. _He couldn't move past the pain. He must have gotten overcharged. Ironhide had spoken of the processor aches that rose from overindulging in high grade. He must have done so himself, because there was no other logical… no reason why his helm… hurt. But why…?_

" _I heard something over here!" The shout rose from right outside, and Optimus cringed at the way the voices reverberated in his helm. A scratching noise rose from the other side of the door before quieting down again, and Optimus had a brief moment of panic when the door supporting him_ whoosh _ed open. He gave a garbled cry as his body fell sideways, and his gyroscope spun wildly when another mech deftly caught his shoulders from the side. His helm snapped down when his momentum stopped, and he moaned when his processor ache rose to the forefront of his mind again. The horrified shout of, "It's Optimus Prime! Bring a medic!" right beside his audio receptor did nothing to help the pain._

" _Optimus?" This voice he recognized. His optics flickered online—when had they offlined again?—and he stared into the concerned optics of Ratchet. He had been a liaison to the Elders… They had crossed paths many times before, though not recently. He must have been headed to the Senate to speak with them._

 _The Senate! The Senate—he had to warn them!_

" _Seneeehhhh–" Optimus tried to say, and his processor filled with panic when his vocalizer broke off into static. He had to_ warn them _! Ratchet fiddled with something at the base of his throat, his face holding a strange mix of worry and shock. As he worked, he kept a steady stream of reassurances. He was going to be okay, he promised Optimus. He would fix the damage covering Optimus's frame._

" _Try to speak again," Ratchet ordered after a few moments. It took Optimus a few moments to process those words, and nearly half a breem to force the words that he needed out of his audio processor._

" _Sehhnehhh wahhhnnn," Optimus rasped. Ratchet's face fell, and he placed a comforting hand on the prime's shoulder._

" _You did, Optimus," he said, his voice as downtrodden as his expression. "They didn't listen."_

 _At these words, Optimus finally focused on his surroundings. Destruction. Chaos. He stared at the ruins of upper level Iacon Square. Bodies littered the streets, dismembered and gray in death. Congealed energon seemed to be on every surface, and Optimus' processor flashed back to the "overcharged mechs" in the room he had just left. The buildings sported huge holes where missiles had found their marks, and the cries of the living… the survivors… overwhelmed his aching audials._

 _He had warned them._

 _They hadn't listened._

 _Iacon was destroyed…_

 _This was_ his fault.

* * *

Optimus's frame onlined with a jolt, the memory flux swirling in front of his optics and mixing with the darkness around him. Iacon. The Senate!

 _Iacon._ Nausea rose in his tanks as horror and self-loathing settle deep in his spark. Primus, what had he _done_! How had he not fought harder to prevent that? A small part of his processor repeated back the platitudes that had been spoken to him by his friends, but he quickly brushed them away, shutting down the words even as they whispered in his mind.

He rose to his feet when the painful images flashed through his mind again. Light. He needed light, he decided as the surrounding darkness began to weight on his spark. He hopped down from the bedside table that housed his berth and trotted toward the desk across the room.

Spark. As if he had one of _those,_ his mind huffed derisively. He was a _toy_. A _plaything_ for a teenage girl with low self-esteem and depression issues. Primus, his fraggin _memories_ weren't his own. That flux wasn't even his _own_ memory, but something an unnamed _human_ had programmed into his head.

As quickly as the self-righteous fury rose within him, it just as swiftly withered and died. He had no right to be angry with Tex or to think those things about her. She was incredibly understanding and supportive of him, and on that note, how could he judge her for her self-esteem and depression when he suffered from identical problems? Tex had helped him through many of his "PTSD episodes," as she called them, just as often as he had helped her sort through her depression.

That's probably what she would label this as: a post-traumatic stress episode. Past research had offered them a bevy of information on the human trauma disorder, and there was no doubt that Optimus would have been a prime candidate. In fact, there were many soldiers wearing the Autobot emblem that could similarly diagnosed. Not that that mattered now.

As he deftly began to climb the leg of the desk, Optimus wondered, not for the first time, why his programmers would create such horrifying memories for their creations. He understood in some part that to remove those memories would change his personality to a degree, but wouldn't it be better for the humans he was paired with to have a mentally sound Personal? True, he would never harm another innocent being, but wouldn't a pre-war Optimus Prime be a better companion?

" _I wouldn't have you any other way, Optimus,"_ a voice that sounded distinctly like Tex's flitted through his processor, and he remembered that he had had this conversation with her many times before, each time after a memory flux similar to this one.

Optimus pulled himself onto the desk and moved over to the desk lamp. His hands lifted to the power switch when he paused. The light would wake Tex. In truth, this wasn't too big of an issue. His lieutenant was accustomed to waking early due to Optimus's recharge fluxes, and she never seemed to mind talking them out with Optimus. If anything, she claimed that it made her feel special and needed. It still bothered the mech that she was always forced to wake up and deal with his issues.

No. This time, he would work through it himself. He would force the memory files down and return to recharge like the adult he was.

And so, that was what he did. The desk was uncomfortable as he stretched out on it, but he didn't care. The legs of the bedside table were made of metal, and as such, he was unable to climb up them as he had the wooden desk leg. This meant that the only way to return to his berth was by climbing onto the bed, which would assuredly wake up his lieutenant. That would be counter-productive, so he lay on the desk instead. With an air of finality, he shut down his processor and dropped into a dreamless recharge.

* * *

He had to give his human credit for her silence the next morning. For the first time in their two years together, Tex woke before Optimus did. It was the first time the small robot had not watched the sunrise, and the first time he had slept on the desk rather than his berth. These were ample reasons to question the prime's mood. His lieutenant had learned over the past years not to push him, though. If he wished to speak on he subject, he would broach it.

And so there was silence that morning. No upbeat music filled the bathroom as Tex straightened her hair, and no knowing smirks were sent her way as she grumbled about the sun shining in her eyes via the window behind her facing the mirror. Only numb, unsettling silence filled the air. Optimus wondered if Tex felt as weird about the lack of speech as he did as she moved through her morning routine. He knew she could tell something was off by the glances she sent his direction, yet she held her quiet. And despite how peculiar it felt, he held his.

It was strange that in his whole existence, this was the first time he felt truly like a robot. He sat stationary in the desk until Tex picked him up, handling him much like a fragile doll as he carried him down the stairs. His mind was blank in part, his memory flux being the only thing he could think on. Was it a side effect of the "dream?" He still felt like he had a concussion. Ratchet's words kept flitting through his processor, uncondemning and earth-shattering.

"They didn't listen."

How many times had Megatron caustically called Optimus the Senate's lapdog? How often had he told the prime that he was foolish for asking for permission instead of taking the steps to do what must be done? Optimus had always assumed that it was Megatron's inferiority complex talking because Optimus had been chosen as Prime above him. How wrong he had been!

"Optimus," a female voice called. The red and blue mech paused in his internal dialogue and peered up at the concerned human above him. "You're acting really weird," she pointed out carefully, and Optimus saw the words for the ploy for information that they were. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he chastised himself for worrying his charge, yet the forefront of his processor remained strangely blank.

As he parted from his self-deprecating processor loop, pushing away his despondency with significant effort, other noise filtered in. Tex was watching the news, a rarity for her. He wondered idly if she was even watching it or if she had simply turned on the TV for the noise. She wasn't a fan of the mainstream news, claiming to dislike the general dismal mood that most stories projected. He could relate. He could remember the reports on the public comms, the descriptions of the horrors that Megatron wreaked on those he viewed as enemies. So much innocent life was lost over the decavorns of battle.

"Optimus." The familiar voice of Tex broke him from his thoughts, and he turned his optics up to her expectantly, even as his mind drifted back to his memory flux. The human _must_ have noticed that he wasn't particularly paying attention. They had been together long enough for her to recognize and decipher his actions and expressions. Still, she continued, repeating his name once more to regain his feeble attention span before continuing with, "Persobots Incorporated has put out a statement regarding their Optimus Personals."

 _That_ got his attention. Blue optics brightened and whirred as they focused fully on his companion's face. Her eyes held unspoken emotion, yet Optimus could only detect the concern that she openly displayed. His optic ridges furrowed, but she spoke again before he could comment.

"Some owners have submitted complaints about their Personal's memory fluxes. Evidently, different Optimus Personals show different severity of PTSD symptoms." She paused and tapped her pointer finger against her chin as she glanced at the TV, where Royce McMallony, the CEO of Persobots Incorporated, was speaking behind a microphoned podium. "Probably depends on what their function is and how mature their owners are." She grew quiet, a pensive look on her face.

"Because of this," Royce announced from his podium on the screen, "we are accepting temporary returns of any and all Personals: Optimus Prime to be reprogrammed."

His sparked squeezed in his chestplates at the very thought. Memories of captured, reprogrammed Autobots flitted through his processor. It was a peculiar pastime of Soundwave to reprogram Autobots or add alternate subprogramming before returning them to their original faction. The mechs were never the same, even after the foreign programs were eradicated. The mechs had difficulty remaining connected to reality, and many developed dual personalities that competed for dominance until the processor shorted from the stress.

A glance at Tex revealed to him that she didn't particularly appreciate the concept, either. Of course, having more than dabbled in Cybertronian lore, she likely had at least a general idea of what reprogramming looked like to a bot. Her face was twisted into a grimace, but she kept her attention on the screen.

"This won't alter your Personal at all," Royce went on, a reassuring grin on his face. "In fact, all it will do is remove the nasty memories that were programmed in and replace it with some more pleasant memories of a peaceful Cybertron."

"He probably doesn't even know what Cybertron really is," Tex mumbled under her breath, and somehow, Optimus knew she was likely correct. The human on the screen reminded him ironically of the Senate, making promises about a topic he really knew nothing about. After all, the only ones who could be completely certain of the outcomes were the programmers behind the scenes, and even then… there were so many variables that went into a mech's programming…

One wrong deletion…

"If you are interested in repairing your Personal: Optimus Prime, simply speak to your local Persobots Incorporated retailer, an–" Royce's voice disappeared with the image on the screen when Tex hit the power button.

The silence held for a few beats. Optimus remained deep in thought, and his human respected his space. After all, this was weighty news indeed. He couldn't deny that a part of him – a _very small_ part of him – basked in the idea of erasing his painful memories. No more nighttime memory fluxes. No more pining for a life before his appointment as prime. No more flashbacks. No more Autobots vs Decepticons. Just Cybertronians living life the best they can. It was a false peace, but it would be peaceful nonetheless.

Just Cybertronians… but how many of those Cybertronians had he met _after_ the war's start? If he was being honest, he had only known mostly upper echelon bots before the war, and before the primeship was placed on his spark and shoulders, he knew only a few other data clerks and _spoke_ to even less. Orion Pax had not been a social mech, to say the least. His first true friend had been Ironhide, and he only met the weapons specialist after he had been appointed to be his bodyguard.

So many horrible memories filled his cortex, yet so many more pleasant ones tempered them. Playing with a young Bumblebee, meeting Elita-One for the first time, winning a lobbing game against Ironhide, learning Circuitsu from Prowl. All these happened after the war's start.

His optics slid to the larger femme seated next to him. He met her patient hazel orbs and considered her for a moment. How would his relationship with her change without these memories? Much of the advice he gave to her came from his own friends and mentors when he went through similar moments of depression and self-loathing. Would he be able to connect with her the same way? Would he still be able to bring her from her episodes if he could no longer relate to her?

"What is your opinion on this?" Optimus asked suddenly. Tex frowned thoughtfully, leaning back into the couch as she spoke.

"I don't know how Personal programming works, Optimus, and there's a lot of information Roycie-boy left out." She looked down at him. "For instance, will you revert to pre-war Optimus or Orion Pax? That would _significantly_ affect your worldview and how you react to things." She started tapping her chin again as she continued, "And that's including how you'd react to current events or even Transformers events. There's no way you won't see Transformers stuff in the future. I mean, you're living with a Transformers nerd. How will pre-war you handle the knowledge that a war _actually_ happen? I don't even know how past you would react to the knowledge that I _have_ about the future of your world and race."

"Valid points," Optimus hummed.

"But…" Tex sighed as she turned to face him on the couch, "Optimus, you've been having some _really_ _bad_ nightmares." Optimus wondered how much of his alarm telegraphed on his face, because she was quick to continue. "I can hear your fans running really loud, and you wake up at odd hours. Maybe this is something we should consider if it will give you some peace." Optimus hummed as he turned his attention to the black tv screen, currently reflecting the image of himself and Tex seated on the worn couch.

We.

Something _we_ should consider.

His spark grew a bit lighter at the phrasing, and his optics brightened in tandem with his mood. _We._ Because they were a _team_. He forgot that sometimes amidst their struggles. Tex supported him just as much as he supported her, and it was something that helped him through these rough patches. Tex knew the implications of this reprogramming, knew at least on a basic level what it would mean for her. He would no longer be able to help her with her mental health anymore than her other friends could, and he knew that she expected that to be a possible outcome of a reprogramming. They wouldn't have the same sorts of conversations or interactions, as his personality would likely be vastly different. Not bad, perhaps, but definitely different. The fact that she would be willing to give him up as a support system to cure his mental health...

And what about him? To lose those memories might be a quick solution to the problem, but he would lose so much more, too. He loved his recollections of his fellow officers and soldiers, even if many were painful. Even if he was unlikely to see any of them again, he was loath to give them up. And he rather loved Tex, too, in a way. She was very much a friend, as close to him as any of his soldiers and even some of his officers. He could not fathom losing that relationship.

"I believe I will think about it," Optimus stated at length. "There are many aspects to consider. For now, I believe I would like to watch Winnie the Pooh." He looked up at his human when she snorted at the mention of his current favorite movie. She found it ironic that his favorite movie utilized his "voice actor." She never complained or disagreed whenever her requested to view it. He was certain it was secretly her favorite, too. Or maybe she was just humoring him.

It didn't matter, though, he decided, as the familiar theme song filled the room, introducing the Hundred Acre Wood and its inhabitants. Nothing mattered right now. Nothing expect for this moment, this temporary mental peace, and his human who made it all worth it.

* * *

So, earlier this year, I was employed in a veterinary clinic (dream job) that never found anything positive about your work. No matter how well you did your job, it was never enough, and the stress (along with the stress from taking Ochem 2 and Physics 2) spun me into a really dark depressive episode. There were days i didn't have the energy to get out of bed, I cried every night in the shower, and I had some very dark thoughts. Luckily, much like Optimus, I had a very supportive friend that helped me survive through the struggles. Tex, in this chapter, was based more on my friend than on myself.

If you have depression, please find someone who can help you. Whether that's friends or family or a therapist, support really helps. Try as hard as you can to keep your head above water, because **_it does get better._**


End file.
